Covid test

I had to get a Covid test last weekend. The results came back negative Tuesday morning, 36 hours after the test. It was relatively quick and easy to do, any discomfort was on a par with getting a needle: unpleasant but brief.

The local university required students returning after the Christmas break to quarantine for two weeks and get a Covid test around the 7th day of quarantine. Last September they were requiring quarantining students to get three tests at the beginning, middle and end of the quarantine period but this time only one test was required. So one student in residence did as required and the first day after his quarantine period he went grocery shopping. As it happened so did I, within the same time frame. A few days later the grocery store was declared an exposure site, I checked my grocery store receipt and booked the Covid test. I didn't have to self-isolate because they said it was a low risk exposure due to everyone being required to wear masks at the store and only a certain number of people allowed in at a time. I've never found it crowded.

At the Reservoir I told a couple of people and they all said they never shop at that grocery store, they go to an out-of-town farm market instead. Students generally don't go to farm markets. All well and good so long as you don't need something that only a grocery store carries. I guess I could have ordered stuff for delivery but it's a pain and you don't always get what you want. I try to keep a grocery list but that week I went to the grocery store three times because I kept forgetting to add stuff to the list.

With the kerfuffle over vaccine production happening in Europe, vaccination rates here have come almost to a halt. Canada stopped manufacturing its own vaccines back in the day when it was deemed not cost effective to make your own when you could just order it from another country. Ha. I see that my age group will now not get vaccinated before the summer, if then. Having everyone vaccinated by September is looking overly optimistic, probably only achievable if we all get it in August. Ha.

I am starting to have some sympathy for conspiracy theory believers, reading the official news about the vaccine is starting to sound more and more like double talk. I try to keep my head down and not think about it.

I've been skating regularly but because this is an uncommonly mild winter the ice quality is poor. I am very grateful I got out on the ice when it was fresh because it was near perfect then. The fact that Hapi is not afraid to walk on it is an indicator of how bad it is, not slippery at all. I debate taking up X-country skiing instead but frankly I barely have the energy for skating, I know for sure skiing would wipe me out altogether.

Mal on the loose

Exhausted dog in her bed

I got to go skating two days in a row and it was great. I was going to go skating on Friday but out of the blue a big snowstorm arrived. Caught everyone by surprise, even the weatherman. It was a nice storm, hardly any wind and big light fluffy snowflakes, but a serious dump of snow that closed schools early and took most cars off the road. A few people who went out early got to skate on the pond in an inch of fluffy snow. That was my dogwalk time so I didn't bring skates and within an hour there was too much snow on the ice anyway.

Later in the afternoon I wanted to go downtown to check my mail. In this town there's no mail delivery, you pick up your mail at the post office. But you can only go during regular office hours so Friday afternoon is the last chance of the week. I'm waiting for a seed catalog and was hoping it was here, but it wasn't. I planned to walk down without Hapi because I wasn't sure she had the stamina for a round trip down and up the hill. However she hauled herself out of bed as I was getting ready to leave, so I took her.

Boy was she excited! A walk in the snowstorm, her favourite thing! She pranced all the way down the hill. With the snow and the snow plough it was a bit greasy under foot and she was pulling on the leash but I managed to stay upright. On the way back up the hill she went into high gear. Refused to walk on the sidewalk, had to walk in the middle of the road. Several times I had to yank her to the kerb to get out of the way of the few cars that were sliding around on the steep hill. As soon as we reached a quieter street I gave up trying to slow her down, and let her off leash. It was getting scary, I nearly slipped and fell a couple of times trying to keep pace.

She took off like a bat out of hell, straight up the hill all the way home. Well not quite, she stopped at one house to check out their backyard. But it was amazing to see, she hasn't run like that in over a year. When I got home she was running around the yard in the deep snow, still excited and just burning off energy.

Of course she slept the rest of the day, she had used up all her spoons and then some. Crazy dog.

First skate

I went skating on the pond yesterday. I was the only person skating, the ice was smooth, clear and trackless. It was a joy to be out there, I imagine the feeling is similar to what downhill skiers experience. In the photo above, all the marks on the ice are mine.

Hapi watched from the shore.

Later, more skaters arrived. A young man brought an axe and a metal pole to measure the ice thickness, his mother was there with a long rope in case he went through the ice. It was 5" thick. I had seen a father and son skating the day before, I thought since there was no hole indicating that they had fallen through that it was probably safe to skate on. The last couple of nights have been really cold and the daytime temperature has not exceeded 0C.

The moon over the ice

Yes it was a risky thing to do, but soooo worth it. There were a couple of Parks Maintenance guys working near the pond, I thought if I did go through the ice, they could probably help me out.

Later I walked Hapi on the trail around the pond and met someone who asked if it was me who was out there skating. I said Yes and she said, You don't have to skate alone, call me and I'll go skating with you. I didn't know what to say so I just said Sure. It was such a thrill to have the pond to myself, skating alone was not a downer.

When I first went out on the ice my skates were a bit loose. The first time skating each year I always get them either too loose or too tight so I have to stop to adjust. I decided to skate to 'The Heron House' and adjust them there. This is my own private name for the spot where I saw the heron on the shore the first weekend of December. It turns out that it is a small clearing on the shore and there is a path leading out to it that you can only see when the trees and bushes have all dropped their leaves. I have walked out there several times since December and I feel like I am experiencing the world through that heron's eyes when I am there. So I call it The Heron House.

Here comes the sun

This is not the most complimentary photo of Hapi but it is what she looks like now. It will all grow back but she does look fragile in this photo, compared to how she looked in her youth, in the header photo above. 

Yesterday afternoon at the Reservoir Hapi and I were walking with Owen and his owners. Owen is a bit larger and a bit slower than Hapi. We met up with a young man and his St Bernard dog. The dog was hilarious. Full of energy he ran around and around us, in and out of the woods and checked out Owen until Owen growled at him. He generally carried on like a crazy dog, we were all laughing at him. Compared to the St Bernard, Hapi looked like a skinny minny and fortunately the bigger dog left her alone, he seemed to at least know better about that. 

But he was crazy. His owner, not a small man himself, told us non-stop stories about this dog and its former mate, Wiser and Ram. Mostly about how out-of-control they were. They broke windows and scaled ten-foot high walls. On more than one occasion the police were called. Unfortunately on one of their escapades they ran out into the highway and Ram was hit and killed, he was the bigger of the two.

When we got back to the parking lot the young man and his dog squeezed themselves into a small car, in which all of the fabric ceiling had been torn and was hanging in tatters around their heads. The dog stuck his huge head out one window and the man waved to us from another window as they drove off. They were just so funny, we stood in the parking lot laughing and laughing.

I forgot my technology Sabbath over the holidays but picked it up again yesterday. It was a slow quiet day, except for the Ram and Wiser stories. I was going to make a zucchini banana bread but the recipe was on my computer so I will do it today. It is a gorgeous sunny day, we have not seen the sun since sometime last year. Owen's owner was saying she was talking to someone who was asked if there was one thing she would like to change in the new year, and that person said that they would like to see the sun. It seemed like a very surprising answer, given all the stuff that is going on now, but when you think about it, sunshine changes everything.

So tired

I am so tired. I feel like I could sleep for a couple of days and maybe that would fix things, but I can't sleep so I can't fix things. Lying awake at night is like torture, my eyes are too tired and sore to read so I just have to lie there, awake but unable to do anything.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Two of my sons and I are using the Watch Party feature on Prime Video to watch a TV series we all enjoy. We usually watch it on Wednesday evenings, then talk about it and whatever else afterward on Zoom. This past Wednesday we all had to tear ourselves away from the news (The Washington Capitol riot) to watch. I was talking to a dog walking friend about how just when I was starting to wean myself off near constant watching of internet news, this happens. Apparently 2020 is not over yet, I think maybe it is going to last at least another 6 months if not more. A happier 2021 is a fading dream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The picture above is the corner of my living room that I spend a lot of time in. There's the comfy chair that opens into a lounging chair. On the footstool in front of the chair is a cushion I use when the chair turns into a lounge to put my legs on, since the chair itself is not well cushioned. The footstool also doubles as the place I sit when I am tending to the fire. On the left of the chair is my little greenhouse. I am growing arugula, romaine and cilantro there. The greenhouse LED lights also serve to provide bright light in the morning to ward off depression due to winter darkness: it seems to work. On the right side is a small table that is normally piled high with books and a computer, but at the time I took the photo I was using it to hold another planter near the window. That planter had the tail end of my arugula and romaine crop from the summer garden in it, but that's been harvested and eaten now.

In spite of being right in the front window, this chair provides a fair degree of privacy. The only drawback is that it puts me with my back to the birdfeeder outside the window. All day long there are blue jays, chickadees, finches and other bird visitors there. I should say there are two drawbacks to this chair: my inability to see the birdfeeder and my inability to get out of it. Well, I am physically capable of getting out of it, but when I am so tired and it is so comfortable, getting out of it is really hard.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I haven't taken any photos of this but Hapi had a second grooming session. The groomer took all of her remaining fur this time, except for a little bit on her face and between her ears. She went from looking like a little white lion to looking like a goat with a husky face. I am so used to how she looks now that I have a hard time remembering her old look. Some people think this must be humiliating for her, one person actually said that to me, but I am pretty sure it is not. Her old matted fur was like shackles on her back legs, she has a lot more freedom of movement now. Plus, due to old age the muscles around her tail are weaker and the weight of the fur on her tail prevented her from being able to wag it. But now, fur-free, she raises and wags her tail much more than she used to.

I like that she is an indoor dog now, I like petting her and having her emerging from her new den—aka my bedroom—frequently just to check on me. She likes being petted, I like feeling the warmth of her body which was formerly well insulated under thick fur. Her coat is growing back, she is starting to show some "five o'clock shadow" where the darker hairs of her outer coat are growing in. So now she looks more like a dirty old goat than a snowy white goat.

There's a golden retriever at the Reservoir about the same age as Hapi who also has been shaved. That dog looks almost like a puppy now. The owner thinks his dog is much happier with her short haircut and he was congratulating me on doing the same for Hapi. Hapi's black and fuschia overcoat makes her much more visible in the woods now and we get a lot of compliments on our matching outfits. One guy said we were stylin'.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My son out west has taken up stained glass as a hobby. This picture is of a Christmas gift he sent me, which only arrived a couple of days ago. He and his 10 year old daughter designed and put it together. For me it is a reminder that one day things will be better, and I will go kayaking again.

An Empty Box and other stories

I went to a funeral at a local church yesterday. There were a hundred people in attendance, all masked and distanced, but I will be monitoring for symptoms over the next week or so. The church has a capacity of 400 and under normal circumstances would have been overflowing. We have no active cases in our health region (the seven counties of the southwestern end of this province) but there would have been a few people there from The City, where Covid is active.

The funeral was for Neil Price, who was 104 when he died. He was a well-known figure locally and I have known him personally for 45 years, as the father of a close friend. The funeral was an uplifting event, he was a wonderful man who lived a very long and full life. Music was provided by Sarah Pound, Neil's daughter Heather, and Marcel d'Entremont. When I used to sing with the Baptist Church choir, I sat next to Marcel and his amazing tenor voice was quite intimidating so I sang very quietly. Neil's three daughters and one granddaughter gave eulogies. One of the anecdotes told was of Neil telling bedtime stories to his various children and grandchildren. One infamous story was The Empty Box:

Once upon a time there was an empty box.

.

.

.

There was nothing in it.

He wrote two memoirs, I helped edit the first one and he gave me a copy when it was published, Flashbacks and Slapshots (he was an avid hockey player in his day). Among other things I learned that he was once friends with Grey Owl. The second memoir was completed when he was 102, I've read bits of it but not all. It's called Just Wondering and is much more philosophical than the first one. For a longtime Baptist minister he was very open-minded and curious about many things.

Here's a story about a New Year's Eve visit with Neil eight years ago: Lang may yer lum reek.

He died peacefully, lucid and cheerful until the very end. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hapi has adapted to her new almost-hairless regime. She has become an indoor dog, which is nice for me. I enjoy petting her without her old fur coat, I feel the warmth of her body which was formerly hidden. She has taken over my bedroom as her new den. She is happy to go for walks in her new colourful coat, and I wear a matching black parka and fuschia beret. We are locally famous for our amazing fashion sense.

Loneliness II

I'm coming back to a subject I touched on earlier: loneliness. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject and trying to formulate this post in my head. Principally, I've been reading Loneliness (2008) by John Cacioppo and Lonely (2010) by Emily White. Cacioppo is a social neuroscientist (a field of research that he founded) who describes the results of his research on the subject; White is a Canadian writer who describes her experience of loneliness in the context of that research. I found White's book the more interesting of the two simply because of its very personal nature, but Cacioppo's book is interesting because of the objective science he brings to the subject. Both writers refer to another scientist, Robert Weiss, who wrote about loneliness in the 1970s; White calls Weiss's book the Bible on Loneliness. He overturned some prevailing opinions on loneliness through his meticulous research studies. Unfortunately, those prevailing opinions are still very much in vogue.

Humans are an 'obligatorily gregarious' species, which means we need to live in groups in order to survive. We are biologically determined by our need for others in that being alone is not only dangerous but bad for our health. Some mammals are adapted to the single life (orang-utans and bears for example) and others are not (chimpanzees and baboons). The health effects are numerous and borne out by research. You die younger. It compromises your immune system and sets you up for cardiac and neurological problems. 

Cacioppo suggests thinking of the role of loneliness in our lives this way: humans first evolved in a relatively harsh environment (the African savannah) and going it alone was simply not an option for survival. But if you belong to a tribe and for some reason you are ostracized and kicked out of that tribe, then you are in danger. So there you are, out on the vast savannah all alone, and you see on the horizon another tribe of humans approaching. At first you might think, Oh good, I can just join up with them and everything will be fine again. But then you realize that it might not be that simple, they would see you as The Competition for limited resources, and you are only one while they are many. Maybe approaching them is not such a good idea, maybe hiding is the better option. You are in a difficult position, potentially risking death by staying alone or almost certainly risking death by attempting to connect with strangers.

That is how loneliness operates. You don't really want to be alone and it is ultimately bad for your health, but there are strong forces within you cautioning you to avoid contact with others. Unlike depression, it's not something you can bootstrap yourself out of. It's also not age-dependent, it's not strictly a problem of old age, although we like to characterize it that way. And it is becoming more pervasive across all ages. Just in the past few decades statistical surveys have shown that it has and is growing immensely as a serious social problem. But the stigma attached to it makes it very difficult to deal with socially. It is far easier to admit to being depressed than to admit to being lonely.

Until relatively recently we treated depression as a personal defect too, people didn't want to admit to it because of the stigma attached. But now we see depression not as a personal shortcoming but as a kind of illness that can be treated with various therapies, whether prescribed by a doctor or psychologist or self-administered. Loneliness still very much has a stigma attached to it, lonely people are seen as somehow defective, perhaps lacking in social skills, basically unlikeable, or deliberately self-isolating for wrongheaded reasons. The lonely person herself will wonder what is wrong with her that she can't make friends, enjoy an active social life, or attract a lover or mate. There are no proven treatments for it, a doctor or therapist won't diagnose it nor recommend treatment for it, other than to get out there and socialize. See the alone-on-the-savannah story above.

Weiss was the first researcher to show that lonely people do in fact have entirely adequate social skills and are just as attractive as anyone else. Many lonely people do have lovers and mates, even active social lives. He suggested that there were two kinds of loneliness, social and emotional. Social loneliness is the lack of a satisfying or adequate social network, emotional loneliness is the lack of intimate contact with at least one other person. Cacioppo goes on to show that there is a further breakdown into longterm chronic loneliness and shortterm circumstantial loneliness. A significant majority of longterm loneliness is triggered by parental divorce or separation. A person grows up experiencing a deep insecurity about relationships of trust that they can never quite shake.

There is a genetic component as well, some people have a higher need for social interaction than others, and that appears to be genetically determined. That doesn't mean that those people are more lonely, just that they may be predisposed to loneliness if that need is not met.

White ends her book with the development of a personal loving relationship in her life. She says that her own efforts to deal with and end her loneliness did not help, it was the sheer luck of finding someone to love and be loved by. Both White and Cacioppo contend that loneliness is a big social issue and really only has social solutions, it takes other people to bring the lonely person back into social connection. White describes some organizational efforts in that direction, loneliness reduction programs that attempt to bring lonely individuals into the fold. Not simply with other lonely people, but other lonely people that they have commonalities with that will ease the development of social connectedness.

White wrote a second book Count Me In (2015) that follows up on her life after the period described in the first book. In the second book she is single again after the love relationship of the first book ended, and describes her concerted efforts to reconnect socially. I've read some but not all of it so won't comment now about her conclusions.

Given the rise of loneliness in our modern culture and the past year of pandemic isolation, I can't help but believe that social loneliness may have reached a tipping point. I see in the news that mental health and isolation are now seen as serious side effects of this pandemic. How we will address that is going to be interesting.

Sometime after I moved back to Nova Scotia someone suggested I join the local Newcomers Club (part of a national organization). At the time I wasn't really looking for ways to engage socially, I already had an existing network of old friends here. However my membership in the club has proven immensely beneficial, I now count people I have met through Newcomers as my major social network. I still have previous friends and acquaintances, but Newcomers is a way to have a constant pool of new friends to draw on and social activities to participate in. The structure of the club is almost tailor-made to address potential loneliness. You join at a monthly meeting and sign up for any 'interest groups' that look promising to you. If you don't see your particular interest represented then you can create a group. We have groups for eating together, hiking, cycling, needlecrafts, book reading, games, discussion and social outings. People who are new in town see the club as a way to kickstart a social life here. 

This year the membership fee has been waived and several of the groups are on hiatus. The outdoors groups still meet (outdoors) and a couple of other groups have gone to Zoom. Admittedly our club skews to older people, young people don't often stay when they see all the grey hair around. Newcomers Clubs in other locations are more or less successful, have more or less restrictions on membership. One club is restricted to women only, another boots you out after a specified number of years (three I think). Ours is pretty loosey-goosey, we don't even require you to be new in town or to live within the town when you join. And you can stay as long as your heart desires, no pressure.